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Topic: "Who am I?" (Read 5895 times)

Now usually if someone comes up to me and there's someone with me they don't know I have employed the "Oh let me introduce you to my friend! This is Carol, Carol this is..." and usually they'll fill in.

In fact I might be using that on Sunday as I have learned some names of the people at church but not all of them. I can recognize people really well but when it comes to a lot of people it takes me awhile to remember them all.

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Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

Back in our running days there were many people with whom we were quite friendly on Saturday mornings at the reservoir. Everyone there wore shorts or sweats. Meeting them when wearing business attire often resulted with one party or another saying 'Oh, you're X! I didn't recognize you in clothes!'

Now usually if someone comes up to me and there's someone with me they don't know I have employed the "Oh let me introduce you to my friend! This is Carol, Carol this is..." and usually they'll fill in.

In fact I might be using that on Sunday as I have learned some names of the people at church but not all of them. I can recognize people really well but when it comes to a lot of people it takes me awhile to remember them all.

Yeah, I do that one, too, if there's another person handy and I get to it before being asked "Who am I?" If I'm lucky, I have an instant to ask the friend to find out the person's name.

I've also tried saying my own name for them. Many people appreciate it and take the hint to remind me of theirs, too. But sometimes people get offended -- "Of course I know who you are!!" -- and don't realize that I'm doing it as much to prompt them to remind me of their names as I am trying to help them out.

Honestly, though, why on earth would anyone do that "Who am I?" thing? They are usually really nice people -- why don't they realize how that feels? I mean, they must have had it happen to them, too, right? I guess they just aren't thinking it through.

I've never had anyone add the,"Who am I?" That's a pretty challenging and kind of aggressive approach.Usually they might say, " I don't know if you remember me, but (then add info about where we met)".If they do say 'Do you remember me?" and I don't recall, I might say, "You look familiar but I can't quite place where we met."

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I've never knitted anything I could recognize when it was finished. Actually, I've never finished anything, much to my family's relief.

At my dad's funeral, a woman came in and I kind of gasped and said, "Oh, Mrs. G," then explained to our son that she sang at our wedding, 38 years ago. Later, oddly, she came up to our 33 year old son and said, "Do you know who I am?" She was quite surprised when he had the answer!

I wish it were always that easy! Usually, I have students ask me that, and I haven't seen them since they were 12, so I simply say, "I'm sorry." It's easier for Lucas since they were in high school and look more like themselves, but he doesn't remember names, so just tells them where they sat in the classroom. That satisfies them. Weird.

I meet a lot of people and, while I usually do remember people, given time, it takes a while for the associations to surface sometimes. I hate it when people do this, and always introduce myself if I think there is even a remote chance someone might not remember me. "Of COURSE I know you," is a response I sometimes get. I come back with, "How flattering!"

Librarians get this all the time. A person may have spent a half-hour at the Library in September of 1989 to get an answer to a long-standing question. No one else could help but we found the answer he needed in 20 minutes.

We made a much larger impression on his mind that he did on ours. For him, we performed an amazing piece of research. for us, it was all in a day's work. He remembers us and thinks we should remember him. It doesn't always work that way.

The best thing you can do when faced with a situation like this is to frankly admit you remember the face but not the name.

Yes! Add into this church, my old church that is in my city, people that worked with my husband at previous hospital, the Army, etc., it gets over whelming trying to place people in their proper context. I'm great with faces, but not names.

I once spent a long time at a party talking to someone that looked familiar, but I could't place her. Later I asked my husband if he could give me the connection. It was his ex-wife!

It is a pretty rude thing to do. I think the correct thing is probably to say yes, but I'm terribly sorry that I've forgotten you name. I'd be tempted to say yes, you embarrassed me like this the last time we met too.

If I recall, gellchom, you are a rabbi's wife, which makes it even more awkward since you probably meet a lot of people in the congregation at the same time. From their point of view, it's easy to remember who you are because of your role, so you can't even turn the question back to them.

I keep running into a couple I know from church. I recognize them but for the life of me I couldn't tell you their names! I was so pleased one Friday when I ran into a woman whose name I did know and she knew mine (she usually watches the babe in the nursery).

I went up to the middle school last week to pick up my oldest son as he had stayed after to watch a basketball game between the 8th graders and the teachers. One teacher held the door for me then asked me who I was looking for. It was his science teacher and I didn't even recognize her, it's been so long since I've seen her.

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Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here. Be cheerful, strive to be happy. -Desiderata

I have this problem a lot. I have a huge family on both my parents' sides, and family reunions are terrible. My grandparents on my dad's side were each one of 8 or 9 kids, and running into a family member in town when I know we're related and I know vaguely how, but I can't for the life of me remember his name is really awkward.

I suppose it's a good thing I've earned the reputation of a scatterbrain among my family and friends. Whenever I don't recall someone then either they'll know me well enough to realize that I'm terrible with names and faces or I'll realize that they aren't close enough to me that I should feel horrible for not remembering them. Awkward? Yes, absolutely. Are they putting me on the spot? Yes. But I don't feel bad for being myself and having the failings of my memory that I've had since I was a small child. It's only been in the last few years that I could pick some of my relatives out of a lineup, and I've seen them fairly regularly since I was a tiny child.

Even better at family reunions, the one's that think you should know them when you have no reason to.

Like, "I'm nineteen, the only other reunion I've been to was ten years ago and you didn't attend it. How the eHell am I supposed to know who you are?!"

Honestly, people need to stop with this mess. My favorite person I was introduced to at that reunion was a girl my age who walked over, introduced herself as my third cousin once removed, and then stood next to me while the rest of the family showed off old pictures. No stress, not expecting me to know her from Adam, just "hi, I'm me, here's how we're related, wanna go check out great-uncle so-and-so's pictures from when he was small?"

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"Heh. Forgive our manners, little creature — that we may well kill and eat you is no excuse for rudeness."